LG 42-Inch Class OLED evo C4 Series Smart TV 4K Processor Flat Screen with Magic Remote AI-Powered with Alexa Built-in (OLED42C4PUA, 2024)

I've been wanting a C series for a long time and finally got one. Mac Mini M4 Pro using a Highwings HDMI cable (ASIN B08M9HND4F). Picture quality is fantastic. Whites are white. Blacks are black. So much cleaner than my LG IPS display from 2020. Build quality appears to be great except I would have liked hex screw heads for the feet instead of the normal Phillips or JIS style. With the recent price drop I think this is a fantastic purchase. For functionality, WebOS, in my opinion is slow. Even basic settings takes a few seconds for the menu to come up. You are presented with various terms and agreements that you have to agree to. I've only agreed to two of them and so far there hasn't been any more nags. Unfortunately, I find the agreement terms to be less than desirable but I'm still keeping the tv. WebOS has your standard streaming service apps built in. Plex works well. Youtube works well. I haven't tried the other apps but I assume they function just as well. Sound quality is good. Nothing fancy. If sound is important and you won't be using headphones then grab a soundbar. HDMI audio does pass through from the Mac so that works. Bad part.. The Mac Mini M4 does not support HiDPI so those 4k resolutions are okay for graphics but text is not going to look good. I'm running it at 2560x1440 which is what I've been used to and have no is sues with blury text. I've also installed Better Display to help with quick tweaks for brightness and resolution if I want to do any quick changes. Overall I'm pretty happy with this purchase and would recommend the LG C4 and absolutely if you can find one on sale!

I've had this TV for less than a week, so if anything goes awry, I'll update this review. So far, first impressions are above expectations. Until now, I've only purchased Samsung smart TVs (but my last, owned for < 2 yrs, died). A lot of user complaints concern the remote control; it's a lot like using the Wii remotes (if you remember those), but you do NOT have to use that functionality. The remote has a scroll wheel, that if used, turns on the cursor that you control with a wave of the 'magic' remote. I have found that using the remote in this way is at LEAST 10x faster than using the arrows to navigate menus, search, or enter login credentials. There is a learning curve, sure, but this feature has to be the future. For the TV, it can be set to automatically adjust the picture settings based on the input, which I love. If I flip on the game, it adjusts, if I switch to a video game, it adjusts, if I watch a movie, it adjusts. Just brilliant. I've never really used the built-in speakers from these flat panel televisions, but I tried it before connecting my JBL 5.1 system and I have to say that I am impressed. The native sound from the panel's speakers is very, very good. I think there's an option to use both my sound system AND the TV's internal speakers, which I haven't yet tested. I'm hoping it provides a really robust sound. The on screen menus are intuitive and easy to navigate. The built in LG channels are a little awkward, but I'm getting used to it. The picture is what you should expect from a 4k OLED, beautiful, regardless of the viewing angle. The blacks are deep and inky (should be, since OLEDs turn off instead of gray out). TL;DR: This TV justifies the expense and is a great experience for movie-watching, playing video games, enjoying your favorite Sunday matchups and watching shows. My previous TV was the Samsung s90b. The LG C4 is better.

I was originally considering the lower priced B lineup, but the whole point of my purchase was to get a top quality TV, so I did not make that concession. I'm happy with my decision, the picture quality is amazing, bright when bright, and pitch black when dark. Using a ps5 on it is fantastic, super smooth and vibrant. The bad.. I did not care for the OS, seems clunky and it didn't have our TV providers app, which was ridiculous. Not even available to download on it. I solved the problem by just not using the TV OS and buying an appleTV as the TV hub. Highly recommend this, it compliments the TV perfectly and the apps are all much cleaner and responsive than on the TV hub. Sound on the tv is ok, it's passable, but no TV will ever beat a dedicated speaker system with subwoofer, for gaming it is a must. You already went this far, take the last step so you can feel every boom instead of hear it. Final thoughts, the G lineup is even better, but at the cost of 1000 more for the same size as this C lineup, this more than exceeds my expectations without breaking the bank. Premium tv for sure as far as picture quality, OS could be better, but that is solvable. Sound is decent but upgradeable. Still a 10/10 because you should be focused on picture quality, everything else is mostly irrelevant.

Background blurb and burn in story - First a little back ground for me. I fell in love with the 42" size for my desktop ages ago with the 43UF7600 ( have 36,000 screen on time for that monitor and I still use it). I use these 42" as desktop monitors for both productivity and immersion for games. I upgraded to the 42" oled C2 a few years ago and I loved that monitor but it had a crippling flaw. When using it for office task like word or and semi static content it would aggressively dim the screen and the only way to get it to return was to cause a full screen movement like minimizing a window. After a few weeks I took drastic measures and entered the service menu and shut that function off completely. I knew the risk and was very diligent (I owned plasma back in the day so I had good fundamentals). I took all the normal steps with a hidden taskbar, non static desktops, no desktop icons, etc. This worked really well for years until I was traveling for business and a power blip caused my computer to boot up unattended and sit on the windows login screen for a solid week. When I got back the damage was done, I tried everything, the automated cleaning over and over, endless loops of colors, you name it I ran it again and again. At last I admitted defeat and took my lumps and ordered the new C4. Build and visuals - The C4 builds on the already amazing line of LG oled. While it is not a major improvement over the C2 as specifications go it made small gains here and there. Peak brightness is up a touch and the HDR is a little more responsive and supports more standards. I have never been a refresh rate nut but the C4 does extend the range from 120hz into the 144hz range. IMO if you already own a C2 or C3 there is almost no reason to upgrade to this but at the same time there are no negatives. Silent software changes - So this to me is where the C4 made massive improvements and I don't see many people talking about this. So while the dimming feature is still there and leaving anything static on the screen will lower brightness the timer is longer and the sensitivity for movement is drastically improved. Now just moving the mouse or typing a new word will keep the screen awake or bring it back from diming. They have also added a post dimming step where the monitor will drop your content altogether and move into a screensaver mode. While I do like this mode I wish that it did not require a remote press to bring it out. Remote issues - Ok I am probably in the .5% here but I have four LG 42" screens that I use (two at the office and two at home) so a major pain point for me is remote control. I would love to be able to control my screens in synchrony as I turn them on and off. But LG wants you to bind the remote to the screen so while you can unbind them and get a dual on signal from one remote it only last for one boot as the remote will then forcibly rebind itself with the one screen and then no longer control both. As far as I can find there is not a real work around here but if I fand one I will update. Final thoughts - Overall if you are looking at the 42" for desktop use I recommend it without question. For office multitasking you can get the equivalent of four 21" 1080p windows open with no borders. throw one more 42" into the mix and now you are at eight windows. I can keep four chrome windows open for status monitors searches etc, outlook, teams, IED, and an internal app all open at once and have data immediately available at all times. For my workflow it is amazing and can keep up with my pace as I build and develop. For home use it is also amazing as you can have an immersive game play that is hard to achieve anywhere else. For photo and video editing it is also a joy to work with. All in I am in love with the 42" size and in that size LG is the market leader without question. No other screen comes close save for those that are using panels from LG and rebranding them.

5 star picture (after adjustments); 4 stars overall due to ridiculous AI and picture smoothing effects. First, an amazing picture. Replaced a perfectly working Panasonic plasma (which is still used elsewhere), and the OLED has an edge in overall contrast. I can't stand most LCD TVs, which is why I kept my plasma for 11 years. No flicker, no refresh anomalies, no fuzz, no burn-in...on the plasma. That's what I expected from the OLED. Well, except for burn-in, which I sort of accept that risk eventually. I actually debated whether the more expensive models were worth the (over $1500) price difference. I saw no difference watching them in a high-end TV store (with quality video connections). No difference. The spec sheet is the only place I saw a difference, so I skipped the huge upcharge for the G-series. LG does great marketing, though, gotta say. Out of the box, default settings, the LG picture has the typical 'plastic' smoothing and enhancement that I loathe. It removes all the film grain from old movies, turns skin into some sort of plastic looking surface, and just looks wrong. I knew this, so I immediately turned off all those settings in the numerous menu layers they were hidden away in. (Just Google it if you don't like exploring menu layers. Don't forget to go to the AI section and turn that off too.) The picture, after that, was awesome. For the past 5 months, the TV has run 8-10 hours a day, nearly every day, and we are completely satisfied. We use a Roku Ultra for 100% of TV watching. The only thing on the LG menu that might get used is the OTA channel access. The Roku and LG talk just fine to each other, including turning off the TV from the Roku remote through HDMI (eARC or whatever it is). It just worked. Sound is OK. If you don't have speakers, and you have a bigger room, I think the center channel gets lost, and the overall sound is average. We run a Sony Quad (also from HDMI), and they were a vast improvement. But, any decent-quality speaker addition will be an improvement. But, if you have no speakers, just give the TV a try for a while and decide. It's not terrible. It's better than the internal speakers of 100% of the hotel TVs I've used, and better than my old Panasonic ever was when new. Other tips. If you want your Sony speakers 'dedicated center channel' plug to work...get a Sony TV. There is no workaround, it's a proprietary Sony feature restricted to Sony TVs. If you mostly stream, you probably already have a streaming device. Just use that if it supports eARC. The LG app system seemed cumbersome and clunky to me, especially after being on Roku for 10+ years. Let the TV keep itself updated. WiFi is fast. I hardwired ethernet, but with a fast router the TV does great on its own. Streaming is smooth the few times I've tried the native LG apps. There's a built-in LG free channel guide that has hundreds of channels. About 1% might be worth watching, but they did seem to work as well as any ad-based channel streaming I've seen. Better than literally any hotel TV guide ever works, honestly. You can (through a life-wasting labyrinth of menus) set up favorite channel lists in that app, so you don't have to scroll past 200 pages of channels every time. The LG Remote is OK. Like nearly all complex remotes, most of the buttons are obvious and others are inexplicably obscure. No point in reviewing buttons here, but let's just say that LG could maybe stand to shake up their human factors design team a little...To me, 30% of the remote is wasted, and after initial setup, we never used the LG remote. Roku remote does it all for us, including Sony speaker volume through eARC. If you want to use any of the LG apps, you're back to the remote.

Amazing TV, one of the best out there, crystal clear image. Could not ask for a better picture. Only issue is that bc it is so large it is spooky setting it up as it wobbles when lifting. Be careful.

I bought the LG C4 as replace my 4k/120hz Acer Predator 43 inch monitor that inexplicably died on me after just four years of service. The LG is better in nearly every way. You don't get displayport but do you do get HDMI 2.1 which provides more than enough bandwidth for 4k/144hz with HDR. The clarity and deep blacks on this display are spectacular (as you might imagine an OLED would be). Being a TV it has more functionality than a monitor would, you have a tuner, you have apps, you have a full function remote you have wifi and ethernet. Ten or fifteen years ago, a serious PC gamer would've never gone with a TV over a proper monitor, the input lag was too much, the TV wasn't going to able to display triple digit framerates, etc. But times have changed and now higher end TVs can match or beat some "gaming" monitors in terms of refresh rate and input lag. The only downsides to this TV are that not all adjustments are available in every mode which can make your initial setup frustrating. And while HDR performance is overall good, this display doesn't get as bright as some of the best VA or IPS panels, but you also get much deeper blacks in exchange. In terms of value for money, as a computer monitor it's not bad at all. Dedicated OLED monitors (or even IPS/VA monitors) of this size are going to cost just as much if not more. As a TV though, where prices are generally lower, the price becomes harder to justify.

I hate almost everything about this television. I got it as a splurge to replace the $100 tv we had in our living room thinking I was getting an upgrade. The sound is all over the place, I can almost never hear the dialogue on anything I’m watching. I’m constantly having to change the sound settings for every different thing I put on to try to make it a little better. Every single time I turn it on, I’m getting some alert about how it needs to power off to clean pixels for 10 minutes when the television had already been turned off for 12-30 hours straight and I’m turning it back on for the first time in a significant period of time. The various apps I use are almost always requiring updates before launching - I just don’t see how it’s possible that every app is requiring constant updates which also requires signing out and waiting for the update to re-try. The rolly button on the remote is useless and if the remote is looked at wrong the cursor pops up on the tv and won’t go away until it feels like it’s been ignored long enough. I’m so *not* glad that I thought I’d treat myself with upgrading our television. I hate using this tv, I wish I could just throw it out the window.